The Old Coot is a fire bug.
By Merlin Lessler
It’s a lovely fall afternoon,
as I sit here looking out the window, instead of reading the book on my lap. (The
Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman.) The wind is gusting, blowing
leaves out of the trees and across the yard. It’s blowing so hard, the leaves are
whizzing by, twenty feet above the ground. It reminds me of the good old days, when
that wonderful aroma of burning leaves surrounded the neighborhood where I
lived amid a forest of trees that surrounded our house. There were so many leaves
it was a struggle to wade through them to cross the yard. I raked up elephant
size mounds and fed them into a small pile I’d set on fire. Eventually, I’d get
impatient and get too many going at one time, sending a plume of smoke through
the neighborhood. That’s when the neighbors called my wife and asked her to
have a word with the fire bug burning leaves. I’d back off for a while and when
I thought no one was looking, get the blaze going again. If I didn’t, I’d be out
there all weekend. But that aroma from the burning leaves was oh so nice, on par
with that of fresh bread baking in an oven.
I glad I moved from that
“leaf” house. I cannot imagine bagging the mountain of leaves I dealt with back
then. When I moved to Owego and was clearing the back yard of several years of accumulated
leaves, I decided to burn them to rid myself of the mess. Since it was illegal
to do so, someone called the police, but luck was with me. The policeman went
to the wrong address; I had time to quiet down the fire and he left without
finding the culprit. Besides, my real problem was a giant Chinese gingko tree in
the front yard. Its leaves fell in a single day, starting the morning after the
first hard frost of fall. It looked like a winter blizzard when it happened.
The real issue had nothing to do with the ban on burning.
Those leaves wouldn’t burn anyhow.
They were still green when they fell, packed with moisture and slippery as eels.
So slippery, you couldn’t move them with a rake; you had to push them with a
snow shovel. It took me the better part of two days to get them to the curb where
a village worker came by with a leaf machine to suck them up. Then the machine
broke and wasn’t replaced. We had to bag leaves after that. One fall I broke a
record, ending up with fifty, 30-gallon bags, stuffed to the top. Each bag weighed
a ton; I had to use a wheel barrel to get them to the curb. I’ve moved out of
the “Gingko” house, but still like to walk by on the day the leaves come
storming down. It’s not my problem anymore. Thanks to the new owners, Mike and
Jennifer.
I do miss the wonderful aroma
of burning leaves swirled through the countryside. I guess I became addicted to
it when I was a kid. My friend Woody and I cooked hotdogs over a leaf fire in
the woods on South Mountain in Binghamton since we were seven years old. It was
so easy: push them into a little pile, drop in a lit match and presto, you had all
the fire needed to cook hotdogs on a stick. Every year, as the leaves start to drop,
I’m tempted to build a small fire and become surrounded by that wonderful aroma,
if just for a few minutes. So far, my willpower has held up, but who knows what
the future will bring.
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